Bing It and Uncle Buck

Bing it. I mean Google it.

Go ahead and Bing it. Sounds a bit odd doesn’t it? Yet that is exactly the phrase used in the ABC Television Series Uncle Buck. Pretty obvious that Microsoft paid heavily for the endorsement. So heavily that its product placement was imbedded in the script and not just on some cereal box sitting on a kitchen table.

The TV ripoff based on the John Candy classic

The idea of Googling something has become part of our everyday vernacular. We say it even if we use Bing as our search engine. It’s an expression based upon usage that arose form preference but means less than it did years ago when search engines were in a war for our loyalty and usage.

You know how I feel about Google— that faceless and omnipresent tyrant of what we all see on the internet. No one would like to see BING and the idea of Bing succeed more than me. But I am pretty certain that ship has already sailed. Google won and we all lost.

My issue is not with Microsoft trying to promote its Bing search engine. It has both the right and obligation to do so. My issue is with the way in which it is grasping at straws.

Bing it does not roll off the tongue

It feels so unnatural to say “I’ll Bing it” that is screams of being contrived and smells very badly of being anything but authentic. Underdogs (imagine that I am actually calling Microsoft an underdog) need to be jarring to get their message and meaning across. We tell all of our clients that the price of clarity is the risk of offense but blatant marketing is not just counter productive as it is destructive.

No one watching the show and hearing the words. (By the way this is not the first time Microsoft has placed its Bing product in media using this convention. Bing was also featured prominently in Amazing Spider-Man.) It literally SCREAMS Madison Avenue and, as a result, feels contrived and unimportant.

All we feel when hearing the words is being offended that anyone would think we are so stupid as to believe the idea. This self-definition is the heart of brand equity and is exactly what Bing wants to avoid… unimportance.

The TV rehash of the John Candy Classic

Bing needs to relaunch its brand and revisit its algorithms. It needs to design real differences between itself and Google in a way that meets our needs in a superior manner. This requires more than just an interface. It needs to think about how Google is failing us (like bringing paid URLs to the top of the search) and provide content legitimately based upon our search criteria.

Google can’t do this because it has built a model on this revenue. Bing is just a pimple on Microsoft’s butt and it could more than match its current revenue through acquisition of customers and selling ads on the page rather than purchased and favored search results pretending to be to be important.